WordPress Search Engine Optimization. A complete guide to dominating search engines with your WordPress site

Michael David, Michael David

WordPress is a powerful platform for creating feature-rich and attractive websites but, with a little extra tweaking and effort, your WordPress site can dominate search engines and bring thousands of new customers to your business.WordPress Search Engine Optimization will show you the secrets that professional SEO companies use to take websites to the top of search results. You'll take your WordPress site to the next level; you'll brush aside even the stiffest competition with the advanced tutorials in this book.

Conversational AI with Rasa. Build, test, and deploy AI-powered, enterprise-grade virtual assistants and chatbots

Xiaoquan Kong, Guan Wang, Alan Nichol

The Rasa framework enables developers to create industrial-strength chatbots using state-of-the-art natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning technologies quickly, all in open source.Conversational AI with Rasa starts by showing you how the two main components at the heart of Rasa work – Rasa NLU (natural language understanding) and Rasa Core. You'll then learn how to build, configure, train, and serve different types of chatbots from scratch by using the Rasa ecosystem. As you advance, you'll use form-based dialogue management, work with the response selector for chitchat and FAQ-like dialogs, make use of knowledge base actions to answer questions for dynamic queries, and much more. Furthermore, you'll understand how to customize the Rasa framework, use conversation-driven development patterns and tools to develop chatbots, explore what your bot can do, and easily fix any mistakes it makes by using interactive learning. Finally, you'll get to grips with deploying the Rasa system to a production environment with high performance and high scalability and cover best practices for building an efficient and robust chat system.By the end of this book, you'll be able to build and deploy your own chatbots using Rasa, addressing the common pain points encountered in the chatbot life cycle.

C# 9 and .NET 5 - Modern Cross-Platform Development. Build intelligent apps, websites, and services with Blazor, ASP.NET Core, and Entity Framework Core using Visual Studio Code - Fifth Edition

Mark J. Price

In C# 9 and .NET 5 – Modern Cross-Platform Development, Fifth Edition, expert teacher Mark J. Price gives you everything you need to start programming C# applications.This latest edition uses the popular Visual Studio Code editor to work across all major operating systems. It is fully updated and expanded with a new chapter on the Microsoft Blazor framework.The book’s first part teaches the fundamentals of C#, including object-oriented programming and new C# 9 features such as top-level programs, target-typed new object instantiation, and immutable types using the record keyword. Part 2 covers the .NET APIs, for performing tasks like managing and querying data, monitoring and improving performance, and working with the file system, async streams, serialization, and encryption. Part 3 provides examples of cross-platform apps you can build and deploy, such as websites and services using ASP.NET Core or mobile apps using Xamarin.Forms. The best type of application for learning the C# language constructs and many of the .NET libraries is one that does not distract with unnecessary application code. For that reason, the C# and .NET topics covered in Chapters 1 to 13 feature console applications. In Chapters 14 to 20, having mastered the basics of the language and libraries, you will build practical applications using ASP.NET Core, Model-View-Controller (MVC), and Blazor.By the end of the book, you will have acquired the understanding and skills you need to use C# 9 and .NET 5 to create websites, services, and mobile apps.

Hands-On Linux for Architects. Design and implement Linux-based IT solutions

Denis Salamanca, Esteban Flores

It is very important to understand the ?exibility of an infrastructure when designing an efficient environment. In this book, you will cover everything from Linux components and functionalities through to hardware and software support, which will help you to implement and tune effective Linux-based solutions.This book gets started with an overview of Linux design methodology. Next, you will focus on the core concepts of designing a solution. As you progress, you will gain insights into the kinds of decisions you need to make when deploying a high-performance solution using Gluster File System (GlusterFS). In the next set of chapters, the book will guide you through the technique of using Kubernetes as an orchestrator for deploying and managing containerized applications. In addition to this, you will learn how to apply and configure Kubernetes for your NGINX application. You’ll then learn how to implement an ELK stack, which is composed of Elasticsearch, Logstash, and Kibana. In the concluding chapters, you will focus on installing and configuring a Saltstack solution to manage different Linux distributions, and explore a variety of design best practices. By the end of this book, you will be well-versed with designing a high-performing computing environment for complex applications to run on.By the end of the book, you will have delved inside the most detailed technical conditions of designing a solution, and you will have also dissected every aspect in detail in order to implement and tune open source Linux-based solutions

Learning Articulate Storyline. You don't need any programming skills to create great e-learning material with Storyline. This book will get you up to speed with all the super user-friendly features of the tool, making you a proficient e-learning author in no time

Stephanie Harnett

Storyline is an authoring tool packed with out-of-the-box features that don't require any special knowledge to operate. That's right; this is a programming-free zone! E-learning authoring is no longer limited to developers; the doors are now wide open for subject matter experts with their content, writers with their storyboards, and designers with their media to work in conjunction with developers to collectively create some very cool e-learning projects. Learning Articulate Storyline introduces the powerful and easy-to-use features that are changing the landscape of e-learning development. You will learn about the new paradigms and features that set Storyline apart from other development tools. You'll gain insight into how you can best leverage your skills and some best practices when working with Storyline. Storyline rocks! And you're about to discover why. The aim of this book is to help you bring content to life in interesting and engaging ways, customizing the learner experience, allowing for hands-on participation, and optimizing your production processes to streamline your efforts. This book will help you enhance your skills and become an accomplished e-learning author and Storyline user.You'll work on several different projects, all created from scratch by you as you work through this book. Each task focuses on a set of complementary topics to complete the project. You'll be up and running building your first project within 10 minutes of starting this book and will add content, animate it, and control object and slide behavior to complete your first project. You'll then move on to more advanced topics to incorporate media elements, quizzing, and scenarios, then conclude by publishing your projects.When you finish this book you will be able to confidently create shining examples of e-learning done the right way, and it is this skill that will set you apart from the crowd.

Raspberry Pi LED Blueprints. Design, build, and test LED-based projects using the Raspberry Pi

Agus Kurniawan

Salesforce Sales Cloud - An Implementation Handbook. A practical guide from design to deployment for driving success in sales

Kerry Townsend

Salesforce Sales Cloud is a system rich in functionality, addressing many sales business challenges such as sales productivity, forecast visibility, and sales enablement. However, unlocking the full value of the system and getting maximum returns pose a challenge, especially if you’re new to the technology.This implementation handbook goes beyond mere configuration to ensure a successful implementation journey. From laying the groundwork for your project to engaging stakeholders with sales-specific business insights, this book equips you with the knowledge you need to plan and execute.As you progress, you’ll learn how to design a robust data model to support the sales and lead generation process, followed by crafting an intuitive user experience to drive productivity. You’ll then explore crucial post-building aspects such as testing, training, and releasing functionality. Finally, you’ll discover how the solutions’ capability can be expanded by adding and integrating other tools to address typical sales use cases.By the end of this book, you’ll have grasped how to leverage Sales Cloud to solve sales challenges and have gained the confidence to design and implement solutions successfully with the help of real-world use cases.

C++ Game Development By Example. Learn to build games and graphics with SFML, OpenGL, and Vulkan using C++ programming

Siddharth Shekar

Although numerous languages are currently being used to develop games, C++ remains the standard for fabricating expert libraries and tool chains for game development. This book introduces you to the world of game development with C++.C++ Game Development By Example starts by touching upon the basic concepts of math, programming, and computer graphics and creating a simple side-scrolling action 2D game. You'll build a solid foundation by studying basic game concepts such as creating game loops, rendering 2D game scenes using SFML, 2D sprite creation and animation, and collision detection. The book will help you advance to creating a 3D physics puzzle game using modern OpenGL and the Bullet physics engine. You'll understand the graphics pipeline, which entails creating 3D objects using vertex and index buffers and rendering them to the scene using vertex and fragment shaders. Finally, you'll create a basic project using the Vulkan library that'll help you get to grips with creating swap chains, image views, render passes, and frame buffers for building high-performance graphics in your games.By the end of this book, you’ll be ready with 3 compelling projects created with SFML, the Vulkan API, and OpenGL, and you'll be able take your game and graphics programming skills to the next level.

Learning QGIS. Create great maps and perform geoprocessing tasks with ease - Third Edition

Anita Graser

QGIS is a user-friendly open source geographic information system (GIS) that runs on Linux, Unix, Mac OS X, and Windows. The popularity of open source geographic information systems and QGIS in particular has been growing rapidly over the last few years.Learning QGIS Third Edition is a practical, hands-on guide updated for QGIS 2.14 that provides you with clear, step-by-step exercises to help you apply your GIS knowledge to QGIS. Through clear, practical exercises, this book will introduce you to working with QGIS quickly and painlessly.This book takes you from installing and configuring QGIS to handling spatial data to creating great maps. You will learn how to load and visualize existing spatialdata and create data from scratch. You will get to know important plugins, perform common geoprocessing and spatial analysis tasks and automate them with Processing.We will cover how to achieve great cartographic output and print maps. Finally, you will learn how to extend QGIS using Python and even create your own plugin.

Blockchain for Decision Makers. A systematic guide to using blockchain for improving your business

Romain Tormen

In addition to cryptocurrencies, blockchain-based apps are being developed in different industries such as banking, supply chain, and healthcare to achieve digital transformation and enhance user experience. Blockchain is not only about Bitcoin or cryptocurrencies, but also about different technologies such as peer-to-peer networks, consensus mechanisms, and cryptography. These technologies together help sustain trustless environments in which digital value can be transferred between individuals without intermediaries.This book will help you understand the basics of blockchain such as consensus protocols, decentralized applications, and tokenization. You'll focus on how blockchain is used today in different industries and the technological challenges faced while implementing a blockchain strategy. The book also enables you, as a decision maker, to understand blockchain from a technical perspective and evaluate its applicability in your business. Finally, you'll get to grips with blockchain frameworks such as Hyperledger and Quorum and their usability.By the end of this book, you'll have learned about the current use cases of blockchain and be able to implement a blockchain strategy on your own.

Multiplayer Game Development with Unreal Engine 5. Create compelling multiplayer games with C++, Blueprints, and Unreal Engine's networking features

Marco Secchi

If you’re fascinated by the immersive gaming experiences that enable multiple users to engage in collaborative or competitive gameplay, this Unreal Engine 5 game development book is for you.In this book, you’ll learn the foundational principles behind multiplayer games. Starting with a sample project, you’ll learn how to set up a networked system and make it work. Once the prototype of the project is functional, you’ll start adding game logic, including obstacles and AI opponents, to heighten the challenges and engagement, offering a captivating experience for players. Next, you’ll learn how to debug and optimize the project, before finally deploying the game build and integrating it with cloud services such as the Epic Online Services system.By the end of this book, you’ll have the confidence to develop and manage multiplayer experiences using the Unreal Engine environment, taking your newfound programming skills in your upcoming projects.

Professional Image Editing Made Easy with Affinity Photo. Apply Affinity Photo fundamentals to your workflows to edit, enhance, and create great images

Jeremy Hazel

In this book, you’ll explore the Affinity Photo program through practice-based learning as you make popular photo edits, learning the tools and techniques in conjunction with the workflow concept. Instead of comprehensive description of the tools, you’ll learn through practical application and understand why they work, not just how they work. This is neither a technical manual nor a workbook but a project-based hybrid approach that provides a deeper understanding of how to use each tool to achieve your goal.Starting with the fundamentals of navigating the interface, understanding layers, and making your first edit, this Affinity Photo book gradually increases the complexity of projects. You’ll go from single-layer edits, composites, and RAW development to putting together a complex composition using the tools that you've learned along the way. Additionally, you’ll learn the best practices used by expert photo editors for a flawless finish.By the end of this book, you’ll have a good body of work, be able to evaluate the edits you want to make, and achieve desired results with Affinity Photo.

Applied Geospatial Data Science with Python. Leverage geospatial data analysis and modeling to find unique solutions to environmental problems

David S. Jordan

Data scientists, when presented with a myriad of data, can often lose sight of how to present geospatial analyses in a meaningful way so that it makes sense to everyone. Using Python to visualize data helps stakeholders in less technical roles to understand the problem and seek solutions. The goal of this book is to help data scientists and GIS professionals learn and implement geospatial data science workflows using Python.Throughout this book, you’ll uncover numerous geospatial Python libraries with which you can develop end-to-end spatial data science workflows. You’ll learn how to read, process, and manipulate spatial data effectively. With data in hand, you’ll move on to crafting spatial data visualizations to better understand and tell the story of your data through static and dynamic mapping applications. As you progress through the book, you’ll find yourself developing geospatial AI and ML models focused on clustering, regression, and optimization. The use cases can be leveraged as building blocks for more advanced work in a variety of industries.By the end of the book, you’ll be able to tackle random data, find meaningful correlations, and make geospatial data models.

Hudson 3 Essentials. Here is a book that makes life easier for Java developers or administrators by teaching you how to automate application testing using Hudson 3. Fast-paced and hands-on, the guide covers everything from installation to writing plugins

Lloyd H. Meinholz

Continuous integration (CI) with automated test execution has been widely adopted in recent years. The concept behind CI has changed how companies look at Build Management, Release Management, Deployment Automation, and Test Orchestration. Hudson is a CI solution that provides executives, business managers, software developers, and architects with a better sense of the development progress and code quality of projects throughout their development life cycle.A fast-paced and hands-on introduction to the key features of Hudson 3. You will be introduced to tools that can be used to improve the quality of software development projects. You will also learn how to install and secure Hudson in a variety of IT environments. Staring with a brief introduction to Hudson and how it helps many IT organizations deliver high quality software, Hudson 3 Essentials will show you how Hudson can be installed and deployed in various environments. You will also be guided through the different methods of securing your Hudson installation. Moving on from the basics, you will be introduced to several important Hudson plugins and learn how to extend its functionality by developing your own plugins. You will be shown how Hudson can be used to build different types of applications and how it can deploy a web application to an application server. Finally, you will discover how Hudson can be used to perform automated testing on software applications, and how to generate reports that describe the results.

C# 8 and .NET Core 3 Projects Using Azure. Build professional desktop, mobile, and web applications that meet modern software requirements - Second Edition

Paul Michaels, Dirk Strauss, Jas Rademeyer

.NET Core is a general-purpose, modular, cross-platform, and opensource implementation of .NET. The latest release of .NET Core 3 comes with improved performance and security features, along with support for desktop applications. .NET Core 3 is not only useful for new developers looking to start learning the framework, but also for legacy developers interested in migrating their apps. Updated with the latest features and enhancements, this updated second edition is a step-by-step, project-based guide.The book starts with a brief introduction to the key features of C# 8 and .NET Core 3.You'll learn to work with relational data using Entity Framework Core 3, before understanding how to use ASP.NET Core. As you progress, you’ll discover how you can use .NET Core to create cross-platform applications. Later, the book will show you how to upgrade your old WinForms apps to .NET Core 3. The concluding chapters will then help you use SignalR effectively to add real-time functionality to your applications, before demonstrating how to implement MongoDB in your apps. Finally, you'll delve into serverless computing and how to build microservices using Docker and Kubernetes.By the end of this book, you'll be proficient in developing applications using .NET Core 3.

Architectural Visualization in Unreal Engine 5. Create photorealistic architectural interior renderings in UE5

Ludovico Palmeri

If you excel at creating beautiful architectural renderings offline, but face challenges replicating the same quality in real time, this book will show you how the versatile Unreal Engine 5 enables such transformations effortlessly. While UE5 is widely popular, existing online training resources can be overwhelming and often lack a focus on Architectural visualization. This comprehensive guide is designed for individuals managing tight deadlines, striving for photorealism, and handling typical client revisions inherent to architectural visualization.The book starts with an introduction to UE5 and its capabilities, as well as the basic concepts and principles of architectural visualization. You’ll then progress to essential topics such as setting up a project, modeling and texturing 3D assets, lighting and materials, and post-processing effects. Along the way, you’ll find practical tips, best practices, and hands-on exercises to develop your skills by applying what you learn.By the end of this UE5 book, you'll have acquired the skills to confidently create high-quality architectural visualizations in Unreal Engine and become proficient in building an architectural interior scene in UE5 to produce professional still images.